Friday, February 28, 2014

Venezuela is not my homeland,
but it was my home for nine years, so I have a strong connection to the
country. I hold it in my heart: the warm and energetic people, the parrots
swinging through the sky, the powerful statue of María Lionza in the middle of
the Caracas Autopista.

And it’s my wife’s
country. She’s the one who’s been losing
sleep these past weeks, anxious about the bloodshed in the streets, angry about
the repression, passing along crucial and hidden information to others on
facebook. She’s the one who’s been writing
long tracts, clarifying the situation for those who are still buying the
government line.

We both run into this a
lot: leftists who feel it’s important to
support any government that calls itself socialist. But history has shown us that leftist leaders
are just as likely to suppress protest, to lose sight of human dignity, and to
become hungry for more and more power. For
example, you can say good things about literacy and health care in Cuba, but
you’re also dealing with a country that has inadequate mechanisms for dissent, challenge
and change, and so responds to these things by controlling people’s movements
and choices.

And that’s pretty much what
people in Venezuela are ticked off about.
They are also frustrated with living conditions – one of the highest
murder rates in the world, corruption at all levels of government, silencing of
the press, tight currency controls, rocketing inflation, and constant scarcity. And the Venezuelans I’ve known are a vocal,
confident people, who are not about to keep their mouths shut and go along with
whatever line the government is feeding them.

And no, this doesn’t mean
that they’re stooges of the US, controlled by the CIA, or any of that. Neither does it mean they’re fascists, as president
Nicolás Maduro keeps claiming. It just means that they have voices, voices to
sing and shout with, and they want more power over their own lives, and some
positive changes in their society.

Venezuelans are angry, not
terrorized - even though a dozen so young protestors have been killed, and many
more tear-gassed, peppered with buckshot, or arrested. But Maduro’s responses have just made them
angrier. This rebellion is being shared
on lots of little cameras, even though there have been blockages in Internet
access and Twitter. Still, the videos of
National Guardsmen kicking and hitting unarmed protestors are getting
around.

As an astrologer, what do I
think will happen next in Venezuela?
This is definitely a watershed time, with Pluto closely opposing the
Venezuelan sun. It’s a tense,
pressurized struggle for power, with the health and well-being of the country
at stake. The basic question is one of
identity, with the government basing its vision on the Cuban model, and the
majority of the people struggling for something looser, freer, and more natural
to them.

And yes, I actually do think
Maduro is an idealist, with his sun in Sagittarius squaring Jupiter in Pisces –
although it’s true Pinochet had the same configuration. Maduro is a true believer, someone who has
found both temporal power and inspiration in the same philosophy. He’s also an emotional person, with a
preponderance of water signs, and his success has largely come from his ability
to attach himself to the right people, to demonstrate that he’s caring and
trustworthy.

His Achilles heel is that he worries
that he’s not big or important enough, and this is probably what’s caused him
to react so fiercely to the protestors.
He’s acting from an old ego wound, so often a cause of dangerously
defensive behavior. In November 2013,
weeks before the municipal elections, he invited Venezuelans to help themselves
freely to all the merchandise in appliance stores, with the protection of the
military. He figured it would make him
popular, and help his party win, and mostly it worked. Now he’s extending the Carnival vacation by
two extra days, again working hard to win the hearts (if not the minds) of the
people.

And I do think things will
calm down fairly soon, perhaps from protestor fatigue combined with the
temptations of Carnival, perhaps from a few government concessions. Mars retrogrades
on March 1, and Saturn on March 2, giving a general need to go back and take
care of untended obligations.

The retrograde Mars in Libra could
mean a reversal of course both for the protestors and the government. This indicates a time to reassess one’s
strategies, tools and methods, and figure out if they are actually having the
desired effect. And this is one of the
problems of the Venezuelan protest movement, a diffusion of goals and
solutions. On both sides, there may need to be a lot of processing about ethics
and principles.

With Mars in Libra, both
sides will claim the mantle of old revolutionary icons, carving Simón Bolivar
neatly in half. However, as independent,
progressive and enlightened as Bolivar was, he was no socialist, and in fact,
he could easily have been labeled an oligarch – one of Maduro’s favorite insults,
inherited from Chávez. Bolivar believed
that the landed gentry should be the ones in charge. But there’s not always a lot of connection
between the real human being and the icon he or she becomes.

In any event, there are some
gentler influences during the next month. Jupiter is also just about to go
direct and pass over Venezuela’s sun in Cancer, and tomorrow’s new moon makes a
promising trine to Jupiter, as well. These
indicate more generosity, less defensiveness, and an expansion of
opportunities. And so people may make a
little more room for each other, and work out some tentative agreements.

March is more cerebral than
February was, and it’s a chance for the movement to enter a new and more
thoughtful phase. But there’s still an
emphasis on justice. At the new moon on
March 1, the square between Jupiter and Uranus is very strong, and this is an
independent, visionary, forward-looking aspect, hungry for positive change,
eager for self-expression, intolerant of repression. This aspect has been predominant for weeks
now, and was exact a few days ago, on February 26. It will continue to affect us all until early
May.

And so all over the world, we
see people in the streets, making it clear what they believe, what they want,
what they’re willing to fight for. And thousands
of passionate, clamoring people do make a difference, sooner or later, one way
or another. To speak out is to indicate
faith in a different future, and so this is a time of unrest but also a time of
hope.